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Nokia Symbian^3 UI demonstrated in detail, seeks multitouch devices (video)

Nokia VP, David Rivas, was in San Francisco yesterday touting Symbian^3 improvements. While we've heard and seen plenty about Symbian Three's enhanced user experience already, it's still worthy of another look considering Symbian's dominant marketshare. Besides, David provides a very detailed look as he walks us though elements like the customizable (and more finger friendly) homescreens meant to provide quick access to call features and at-a-glance data. Rivas also reiterates speed improvement claims over existing S60 5th devices (about a 3x improvement in graphics performance) that should "very very pleasantly surprise" users. Naturally, a faster UI coupled with a Symbian device running on something better than ARM 11 will also help here -- Nokia's only Cortex A8 device is the N900 running Maemo, not Symbian. David takes a veiled shot at Microsoft's new WP7 platform when discussing Symbian's true multitaking capabilities without any "tricks" -- apps are actually running in the background, not just freezing their state until you return. Multitouch screen control on capacitive and resistive (really?) touchscreen displays with Cover Flow-like album art navigation? Yup, it's all in there, as are hundreds of usability improvements (and fewer nags!) that should bring Symbian^3 up to the level of what everyone expects from a modern smartphone, according to Rivas. In other words, we'll have to wait for S^4 on early 2011 devices to see any real innovation. While the live demo was run on a laptop, we suspect it won't be long until Nokia starts showing off its live OS on a production handset. Until then, check the video after the break -- it's all we've got.

[Thanks, Rafael C.]

Continue reading Nokia Symbian^3 UI demonstrated in detail, seeks multitouch devices (video)

Nokia Symbian^3 UI demonstrated in detail, seeks multitouch devices (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lucid Imagination Raises $10 Million For Apache Search Technology

Lucid Imagination, the startup that commercially distributes the open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Shasta Ventures with Granite Ventures and Walden International participating in the round. This brings the company's total funding to $16 million. Lucid powers enterprise search technologies using the open source Lucene/Solr search. Customers include Zappos, Nike and Netflix. The new funding will be used to accelerate the adoption of Lucene/Solr search technology.

PrimeSense talks full-body motion control at GDC, gives us a video demonstration

PrimeSense was formed in 2005, and unless you're a sickly obsessed silicon junkie, you've probably never heard of them. All that changes today. We sat down with the company at GDC to learn more about the chip that it produces, and we left with an imagination sore from being stretched so severely. Put simply, the company manufacturers a microchip that, when paired with off-the-shelf optics, can create a 3D grid that a computer can understand. The purpose here, as you can likely glean, is to enable PlayStation Eye-like interactions, or as the company suggests, a "more natural" way to interface with devices you use every day. Rather than grabbing the remote to switch channels or snapping up that HTPC keyboard in order to flip through your stored DVD library, PrimeSense would rather you kick back on the sofa and gently flick your hands in order to turn to this week's Gossip Girl or sort through those classic horror flicks.

It's important to remember that PrimeSense isn't in the business of creating hardware, but today we were shown a reference design that looks an awful lot like an enlarged webcam. The device is completely USB powered, and while the unit shown in the images and video here was obviously a standalone device, we were told that it would be possible to integrate the solution into displays and the like in the future. They also mentioned that the depth location -- which enables it to map out a room and detect your entire body -- was done on-chip, with only the associated middleware taxing the CPU. Still, they've had success running this on Atom-level processors, so there's certainly no big horsepower hang-up preventing it from hitting up a variety of markets.

More after the break...

Gallery: PrimeSense motion control demo at GDC 2010

Continue reading PrimeSense talks full-body motion control at GDC, gives us a video demonstration

PrimeSense talks full-body motion control at GDC, gives us a video demonstration originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Opera Mini 5 Beta Now Available For Android

Sure, Opera Mini may (or may not) already be the most popular mobile browser in the world -- but why stop there? Following up on the Android release of Opera Mobile 4 just over a year ago, Opera has just launched Opera Mini 5 for Android into public beta. The jump from version 4 to version 5 is pretty huge, introducing a handful of features that Opera says "makes your mobile browsing experience as close as it can be to your desktop experience."

PS3 motion controller fails to Move

Sony has every right to feel sore that Nintendo and Microsoft have stolen the limelight from it in adding motion-sensing to games. Sony had the EyeToy camera for sensing motion and putting players inside games on the PlayStation 2, long before Microsoft’s forthcoming Project Natal . Its six-axis controller has always had more motion capabilities than the [...]

Want more on the PlayStation Move? Head over to Joystiq!

Sony's calling the PlayStation Move the "next generation" of motion gaming and planning to market it as heavily as an entirely new console, so it's sort of a big deal -- and that means our main dudes at Joystiq are all over it. We've already covered the main details, but hit the links below if you're looking for some seriously deep dives.

Want more on the PlayStation Move? Head over to Joystiq! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blog – The Puzzle of 21 Lutetia

21 Lutetia has puzzled astronomers since its discovery. Now they have made a daring set of predictions about what the Rosetta spacecraft will find when it flies past this mysterious asteroid in July

On 10 July, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will fly within a few thousand kilometres of 21 Lutetia, a main belt asteroid that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.

Intel’s Core i7-980X Extreme Edition ‘Gulftown’ review roundup

Six cores. Twelve threads. A new flagship processor in Intel's stable. Here at GDC in San Francisco, the world's most widely recognized chip maker is dishing out its latest desktop CPU, and to say it's a niche device would be greatly understating things. We spoke to a number of Intel bigwigs at tonight's media event, and everyone confessed that the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition was a low quantity, high performance device aimed specifically at gamers and content editors that simply refuse to live anywhere other than on the cutting edge. Intel's planning on selling these in retail, standalone form for $999 (MSRP), while they'll soon be available in a variety of gaming rigs from the likes of Dell, Alienware and whoever else wishes to keep with the times. As for Apple? The company stated that Steve and Company "sort of call their own shots," and that we'd have to dig at Apple if we really wanted to know what their refreshed Mac Pro would hold. We chuckled, nodded in understanding, and then learned that this here slab of silicon is a bit ahead of the software out there, with Intel noting that only games optimized for 12-thread use and benchmarking utilities that did likewise would really demonstrate the performance boost. 'Course, anyone who spends a great deal of time multitasking will appreciate the extra headroom, and power users can always find ways to make use of more horsepower. Oh, and for what it's worth, the company stated that this will be its lead desktop chip for some time to come, and if you're looking for a mobile version in the near future, you can keep dreaming.

As for the critics? Just about everyone with a benchmarking license managed to get one of these in-house, and everyone seems to feel (mostly) the same way. There's no denying that this is Intel's speediest consumer chip ever, but you won't find 50 percent boosts just anywhere. Yet. When the software catches up, though, there's no doubt that this chip will make even the other Core i7s look downright sluggish. 50 percent more cores and 50 percent more threads than the prior kings of the line leads to fantastic gains when serious number crunching is involved (audio and video editors, we're staring at you), with some tests showing upticks in the 30 to 50 percent range. As a bonus, the power consumption here is also extremely reasonable, with the shift to 32nm enabling it to even use less power in some circumstances when compared to the Core i7-975 Extreme Edition. Dig into the glut of reviews below if you've got a cool grand with "chip upgrade" written on it -- you'll be glad you did.

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Intel's Core i7-980X Extreme Edition 'Gulftown' review roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Teaching an Old Polymer Memory Tricks

A polymer takes on four shapes depending on the temperature.

Researchers have uncovered shape-memory properties in a commercially available polymer that's widely used to make fuel-cell membranes. The polymer, Nafion, can take on four different shapes in response to temperature changes--researchers have made triple-shape polymers before. "It's the most versatile smart polymer ever discovered," says Tao Xie, a polymer scientist at the GM Research and Development Center in Warren, MI, who published his findings in this week's Nature.

Toyota Applies the Brakes

The company hopes a "smart pedal" will help defuse criticism.

In the wake of a massive public-relations nightmare involving brake problems in its cars, Toyota is investigating two more reports this week of unintended acceleration in its vehicles. Both cases involved Priuses: one in Harrison, NY, that resulted in a crash, and the other on an interstate east of San Diego.